The 10 Coolest Storage Component Vendors: The 2023 Storage 100

These 10 storage component vendors give software and data the right base on which to operate.

Software is what defines a storage system’s services and capabilities, but hardware is still at the base of every on-premises and cloud storage deployment.

And the best hardware requires top-notch components, including processors, SSDs and hard drives, interface cards, and memory controllers.

Component manufacturers are often the unsung heroes of the data center, but CRN is here to celebrate them.

As part of CRN’s 2023 Storage 100, here are 10 storage component vendors that give software and data the right base on which to operate.

Atto Technology

Timothy Klein

Co-Founder, President, CEO

Atto develops storage connectivity and infrastructure technology with offerings focused on Fibre Channel, SAS and SATA, iSCSI, Ethernet, NVMe, NVMe over Fabrics and Thunderbolt. Its products include storage bridging and connectivity, host bus adapters, Thunderbolt adapters, RAM-based storage appliances and more.

Broadcom Software

Hock Tan

President, CEO

Broadcom started in the 1960s as an LED manufacturer, but over the past decade or so has built itself into a semiconductor and storage powerhouse via multiple major acquisitions such as LSI, Brocade, CA Technologies and Symantec. The company as of early 2023 is in the process of trying to close its $61 billion acquisition of VMware.

Kingston Technology

John Tu

Co-Founder, CEO

Kingston, which got its start designing memory modules during a surface-mount memory shortage in the late 1980s, has since grown into a leading global manufacturer of memory and storage technologies for top-tier data centers, cloud providers and system manufacturers. Its line card includes memory, SSDs, flash drives, memory cards and memory card readers.

Kioxia America

Toshiaki Fujikawa

President, CEO

Kioxia, which in 2018 was spun out of Toshiba as Toshiba Memory Corporation before its name change, is a major multinational manufacturer of NAND flash memory for applications ranging from digital devices to storage memory, and of SSDs for PCs, servers, storage systems and cloud data centers.

Micron Technology

Sanjay Mehrotra

President, CEO

Micron is a 40-year-old developer of memory technology with a portfolio that includes all three top memory and storage technologies including DRAM, NAND and NOR. Micron is the fourth largest semiconductor company in the world with 11 manufacturing sites in 17 countries producing DRAM modules, memory cards, SSDs and more.

Samsung Electronics North America

KS Choi

President, CEO

Samsung manufactures DRAM, microprocessors, SSDs and other similar products. The company, which is a leading SSD manufacturer, early this year introduced its first models based on its 5-nanometer process and seventh-generation V-NAND technology.

ScaleFlux

Hao Zhong

Co-Founder, CEO

ScaleFlux develops SSDs that embed computational storage technology into high-performance NVMe flash drives. They are aimed at helping businesses deploy storage intelligence to optimize data center infrastructure for databases, analytics, IoT and 5G. The SSDs have at their heart a custom SoC processor based on Arm technology.

Seagate Technology

Dave Mosley

CEO

Seagate has traditionally been known as one of the top manufacturers of hard drives and SSDs. However, the company has in the past couple of years moved more into cloud, edge and data center storage capabilities with its Lyve edge-to-cloud mass storage platform. Lyve Cloud includes off erings for multi-cloud object storage, analytics and data transfer as a service.

Solidigm

Noh Jung (NJ) Kwak

Acting CEO

Solidigm was formed in December 2021 when Intel sold its SSD business and certain NAND SSD-associated intellectual properties along with a China-based NAND memory manufacturing facility to semiconductor manufacturer SK Hynix. Solidigm manufactures data center and client SSDs along with software to improve SSD performance.

Western Digital

David Goeckeler

CEO

Western Digital is one of the world’s largest SSD and hard drive manufacturers, and its portfolio also includes USB flash drives and memory cards. Its storage products target high-performance data center, file storage, gaming, surveillance, and data protection applications as well as requirements for embedded flash storage.